First off, our goal...
- Aftermarket and Factory harnesses married together
- Completed Harness.jpeg (160.2 KiB) Viewed 12151 times
Here's where it gets tricky (only, NOT)... instead of wiring the aftermarket harness to a new radio plug, I wired it back into the factory harnesses I got from the junkyard! I followed the color guide that I got with the aftermarket harnesses and matched each wire to its factory wire equivalent and then crimped them with butt connectors (hehe) and shrink-wrapped each individual connection. The astute reader will notice that I have a big, solid shrink-wrap over everything. If you'd like to end up with this (it sure looks clean, doesn't it?), then make sure you slide that shrink-wrap down the entire wire bundle OR that your big shrink-wrap will fit over the smaller factory plug.
Here's where it gets even trickier (only, again, NOT)... I didn't wire the speaker wires to anything! I just crimped on a female bullet connector (use whatever type you prefer). Later, I cut speaker wire for all four channels to the length needed to reach the Amp under the passenger seat and I crimped bullet connectors onto one end of the wire and spades (for the amp) onto the other.
Here's my speaker wire bundle...
- Speaker Wire - Complete
- Speaker Wire - Complete.jpeg (171.51 KiB) Viewed 12151 times
If you've just read through this and thought, "Gee, this seems simple," then all I can say is you're right! But, combing the junkyards takes time and crimping and shrink-wrapping everything cleanly leads to a nice finished product.
Now, really, really astute readers will look at the first picture and say, "Hey! There's a loose wire there!" That's right, there is. I actually ADDED that wire in by cracking open another factory wire harness and pulling that wire out with its little metal connector intact and then I inserted it into this harness. Everything I read tells me that this wire will allow me to send the head unit a signal to go into TELEPHONE mode. I never tested this, but I had grand plans to purchase a Parrot bluetooth phone interface and wire it directly into the system so that call audio was routed over the speakers and the head unit would mute and display "TELEPHONE" on the display whenever the Parrot unit was active.
Curious readers will probably point out that in the first picture one of the factory harnesses only has ONE WIRE connected and the rest are folder over and shrink-wrapped. Yes, that's true. All the folded wires are the speaker connections from the head unit. SC-901s don't have onboard amps and we have to leave these disconnected so we can "insert" our amplified speaker signals into the car-side of this harness. This was the WHOLE POINT of this write-up, after all. Now, that one wire that is connected? I totally forget what it was. I think it was illumination dimming or something similarly neat but not show-stopping.
Readers with cat-like curiosity might even ask, "Why are the two aftermarket harnesses linked together like a daisy chain?" Well, those white and grey wires are for the door and dash speakers which are powered by the same channel in the SC-816 head-unit. It LOOKS like they plug in to completely separate places on the back of the SC-816 - I mean, geez! they're even on different plugs! - but they're wired together internally in the head unit. This is a good thing to note, though, if your car audio plans include using a six-channel amp or something else to allow the door and dash speakers to be powered independently - just cut those wires and hook them up to your individual amp channels. The rear door and deck/D-Pillar speakers are wired together in the back of the car and you'd be better off just running new wires to them if you want to power them separately. Don't think I haven't thought of getting an old-school 8-channel SoundStream or ADS amp and doing just this!
By the way, the fundamentals of this cable - breaking out speaker wires from the factory harness path - can be applied to aftermarket systems with external amplifiers as well, you just wouldn't need factory harnesses from the junkyard.
Questions? Corrections? All are welcome.
. It just never clicked for me. Resistance, pressure, etc. I just never understood.
